Author: typicaltim

At my job we are moving from 4 digit extensions to 5 digit extensions because we are running out of numbers. That’s a lot of records to update by hand in Active Directory. So I figured out a nifty way to use PowerShell to reduce the workload. During my research I encountered a bunch of broken scripts, misinformation, and awful solutions posed in forums. So to help the next guy out I figured I’d do a quick what-went-wrong-and-how-to-make-it-right blog post. The principles I used here for my use-case can be applied to any Active Directory user property. Let’s dig in.

I love Google Hangouts. For someone like me who jumps between desktops, laptops, and my phone – it is the perfect solution. Almost. There are some quirks. If you use Google Hangouts out the desktop app in conjunction with the android app for SMS messaging, doubtlessly you’ve ran into the same problem I have. All of the pretty faces of your friends and family in your Google Contacts do not show up for SMS! I have been bewildered by this for about 6 months until I accidentally figured out a workaround (which may actually be the “solution” since it seems Google has yet to address this).

The method I will be using will also work if you just want to create a shortcut for the default browser, but with some minor differences. For my use case here we had a web app that worked better in Chrome – which unfortunately is not the company standard browser. There’s some great documentation out there for the method I will be using, but I have found some weird quirks that are not documented and left me scratching my head for a while. I figured I’d save the next guy some trouble. My work environment uses a Windows Server 2008 R2 box as its’ primary domain controller. If you’re using my reference guide on a newer OS some of these settings might be different. Let’s get started.

If you’re one of those people that stay up into the wee hours of the night; if you prefer to have less eye strain with flat interface colors that have just the right amount of contrast; or if you’re looking to tinker with your Windows 10 box – this is the tutorial for you.

As much as I love Chocolatey, the documentation on the Github page is a bit lack-luster. I spent quite some time reading forum posts after I read the official page on local repositories – which was really vague – before I was able to set one up myself. To try to save other people some time, here is my quickstarter guide on the subject.